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  11. <title>Fourth Wave Consulting</title>
  12. <atom:link href="https://www.fourthwc.com/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
  13. <link>https://www.fourthwc.com</link>
  14. <description>NetSuite &#38; E-Commerce Expertise</description>
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  23. <title>BatchIt (Reconcile Amazon Batch Payments With Ease)</title>
  24. <link>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2022/11/batchit-reconciling-amazon.html</link>
  25. <comments>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2022/11/batchit-reconciling-amazon.html#respond</comments>
  26. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Renee Chandler]]></dc:creator>
  27. <pubDate>Tue, 01 Nov 2022 20:40:03 +0000</pubDate>
  28. <category><![CDATA[Netsuite]]></category>
  29. <category><![CDATA[accounting]]></category>
  30. <category><![CDATA[Amazon]]></category>
  31. <category><![CDATA[automation]]></category>
  32. <category><![CDATA[Reconciliation]]></category>
  33. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.fourthwc.com/?p=14358</guid>
  34.  
  35. <description><![CDATA[Amazon deposits can be difficult to reconcile in NetSuite because there aren’t easy ways to match up the transactions in the Amazon file with the orders in NetSuite.  Manually trying to match up orders is time-consuming and error-prone.  To alleviate the manual effort, increase productivity, and improve accuracy, an automated solution is required.  Fourth Wave [&#8230;]]]></description>
  36. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Amazon deposits can be difficult to reconcile in NetSuite because there aren’t easy ways to match up the transactions in the Amazon file with the orders in NetSuite.  Manually trying to match up orders is time-consuming and error-prone.  To alleviate the manual effort, increase productivity, and improve accuracy, an automated solution is required.  Fourth Wave Consulting customers were struggling with the manual process of reconciling Amazon deposits, so we developed a custom solution to help.</p>
  37. <p>BatchIt is the custom solution Fourth Wave Consulting developed.  This process records the payments and credit refunds within NetSuite, <span id="more-14358"></span> as well as provides a quick way to select the applicable transactions in one deposit.  The process also provides a summary of all the other charges so a cashback entry can be recorded on the same deposit the transactions were selected on.  Once everything is recorded this one deposit will match perfectly to the Amazon deposit line on your bank statement, making bank reconciliation a breeze.</p>
  38. <p>Clients have reported time savings of 3-5 hours on average batch sizes of 70 orders &#8211; every 2 weeks. Using BatchIt, a reconciliation from start to deposit creation generally takes less than twenty minutes. Not only does it take less time but because it is automated, the correct orders get matched up every time.  The process also provides a list of exceptions that help identify if an order within NetSuite was created incorrectly or if Amazon is withholding additional funds unexpectedly.</p>
  39. <a href="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BatchIt-Benefits.png"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-16337" src="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BatchIt-Benefits.png" alt="Benefits of BatchIt" width="508" height="531" srcset="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BatchIt-Benefits.png 508w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BatchIt-Benefits-287x300.png 287w" sizes="(max-width: 508px) 100vw, 508px" /></a>
  40. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  41. <p>This solution uses searches, custom records, custom fields, and NetSuite standard functionality to perform the required processes. Below is the basic process flow that BatchIt uses.  <a href="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BatchIt-Process-Flow.jpg"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-16339" src="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BatchIt-Process-Flow-1024x382.jpg" alt="BatchIt Process Flow" width="1024" height="382" srcset="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BatchIt-Process-Flow-1024x382.jpg 1024w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BatchIt-Process-Flow-300x112.jpg 300w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BatchIt-Process-Flow-768x286.jpg 768w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BatchIt-Process-Flow-600x224.jpg 600w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BatchIt-Process-Flow.jpg 1480w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></p>
  42. <p>This solution can be customized to your specific requirements whether that be recording payments against open invoices or updating cash sales with a batch id to allow selecting them in a deposit via a filter field. If you are struggling with reconciling Amazon deposits (or other marketplaces), <a href="https://www.fourthwc.com/contact-fourth-wave-consulting" target="_blank" rel="noopener">contact us</a>, we will be glad to assist with automating this task so you can get back to your more important responsibilities like growing the business.</p>
  43. <p>Note this solution can also be adapted to other types of batch payments such as credit card batches, Walmart Marketplace batches, etc.  It provides a good option for batch sizes of 30-8000 orders biweekly.</p>
  44. <p>Batchit supports additional marketplaces including but not limited to</p>
  45. <ul>
  46. <li>Walmart</li>
  47. <li>Michaels</li>
  48. <li>Target</li>
  49. <li>Merchant processors like Merchant E and Braintree</li>
  50. <li>Paypal</li>
  51. <li>BBBY</li>
  52. <li>Shopify</li>
  53. <li>Magento</li>
  54. <li>Facebook Marketplace</li>
  55. <li>Poshmark</li>
  56. <li>Houzz</li>
  57. <li>Etsy</li>
  58. <li>Ruby Lane</li>
  59. <li>Alibaba</li>
  60. </ul>
  61. <p>If your marketplace isn&#8217;t listed here, most likely we can support it. Just <a href="https://www.fourthwc.com/contact-fourth-wave-consulting" target="_blank" rel="noopener">contact us</a> and we will be glad to research it for you.</p>
  62. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  63. <p><strong>Customer Review</strong></p>
  64. <p>Sherry from Wesspur</p>
  65. <blockquote><p><em>I would like to just say a few words about how much time we have saved in entering payments from Amazon sales:</em></p>
  66. <p><em>Approximately every two weeks we receive funds from a payment batch of Amazon transactions that have been deposited into our bank account. </em></p>
  67. <p><em>Prior to being able to import the payments, we had to manually enter the payments.  This process took approximately 3 to 4 hours of uninterrupted time to enter.  Since uninterrupted time is not always available, this process could take a few days while working on other daily activities. After entering the payments, we had to balance the payment batch, make any corrections, then clear the payments in Netsuite. Add another hour or so to the data entry, and you have at least a day or two of time spent on this whole process.</em></p>
  68. <p><em>Renee was quickly able to generate a template we could use to download, and import the transactions into Netsuite. Now we can export the data from Amazon, copy into a payment model, run a report in Netsuite and export the transactions to a spreadsheet in the payment model.  Any differences are clearly identified, corrections can then be made. Then the payment data is then imported back to Netsuite for payments to be applied.  The batch is then deposited.  This whole process can be done in less than an hour!  Clearly valuable savings on productive employee time!</em></p>
  69. <p><em>Thank you Renee and David for creating this model for us to use in processing our Amazon payment batches.</em></p>
  70. <p><em>We greatly appreciate it!</em></p></blockquote>
  71. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  72. ]]></content:encoded>
  73. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2022/11/batchit-reconciling-amazon.html/feed</wfw:commentRss>
  74. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  75. </item>
  76. <item>
  77. <title>How to Increase eCommerce Revenue With Upsells and Cross-sells: Cart and Product Detail Page</title>
  78. <link>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2020/09/increase-revenue-with-upsells-and-cross-sells.html</link>
  79. <comments>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2020/09/increase-revenue-with-upsells-and-cross-sells.html#respond</comments>
  80. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kevin Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
  81. <pubDate>Tue, 08 Sep 2020 18:10:17 +0000</pubDate>
  82. <category><![CDATA[E-Commerce]]></category>
  83. <category><![CDATA[Netsuite]]></category>
  84. <category><![CDATA[cart]]></category>
  85. <category><![CDATA[checkout]]></category>
  86. <category><![CDATA[crosssell]]></category>
  87. <category><![CDATA[ecommerce]]></category>
  88. <category><![CDATA[marketing]]></category>
  89. <category><![CDATA[pdp]]></category>
  90. <category><![CDATA[product detail page]]></category>
  91. <category><![CDATA[related items]]></category>
  92. <category><![CDATA[upsell]]></category>
  93. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.fourthwc.com/?p=7450</guid>
  94.  
  95. <description><![CDATA[Upselling is proven to increase ecommerce revenue, with targeted product recommendations responsible for up to 30% of revenue. In fact, back in 2006, Amazon reported that 35% of its revenues were a direct result of its cross sales and upsells. It is also a lot easier to sell to existing customers than to start from [&#8230;]]]></description>
  96. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<a class="featured_image_link" href="https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2020/09/increase-revenue-with-upsells-and-cross-sells.html"><img width="2426" height="1728" src="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/carlos-muza-hpjSkU2UYSU-unsplash.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" srcset="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/carlos-muza-hpjSkU2UYSU-unsplash.jpg 2426w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/carlos-muza-hpjSkU2UYSU-unsplash-300x214.jpg 300w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/carlos-muza-hpjSkU2UYSU-unsplash-1024x729.jpg 1024w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/carlos-muza-hpjSkU2UYSU-unsplash-768x547.jpg 768w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/carlos-muza-hpjSkU2UYSU-unsplash-600x427.jpg 600w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/carlos-muza-hpjSkU2UYSU-unsplash-1536x1094.jpg 1536w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/carlos-muza-hpjSkU2UYSU-unsplash-2048x1459.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 2426px) 100vw, 2426px" /></a>
  97. <p>Upselling is proven to increase ecommerce revenue, with targeted product recommendations responsible for up to 30% of revenue. In fact, back in 2006, Amazon reported that <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckcohn/2015/05/15/a-beginners-guide-to-upselling-and-cross-selling/#7eb08f932912">35% of its revenues</a> were a direct result of its cross sales and upsells. It is also a lot easier to sell to existing customers than to start from scratch with new customers and offering the right upsell at the right time can even earn customer loyalty. Analytics show that <a href="https://blog.gearlaunch.com/how-to-upsell-customers-and-increase-customer-lifetime-value" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">customer lifetime value increases</a> when you upsell.<span id="more-7450"></span></p>
  98. <h3>What is Upsell? Cross-sell?</h3>
  99. <p>Before we go too much further, we need to define what upsells and cross-sells are and the difference between them. <em>Upselling</em> is the practice of encouraging customers to purchase a comparable <span style="text-decoration: underline;">higher end</span> product than another, while <em>cross-</em><em>selling</em> <!--more--></p>
  100. <p>invites customers to buy <span style="text-decoration: underline;">related</span> or <span style="text-decoration: underline;">complementary</span> items. For example, if you suggest to a customer who just bought a new phone to also receive a case, that is a <b>cross</b>&#8211;<b>sell</b>. <b>Upselling</b> when the seller encourages the customer to spend more than they had originally intended, i.e. add-ons, packages, plans, etc.</p>
  101. <p>Enough with all the talk about the advantages of upselling and cross-selling &#8211; in this article we are going to go over how we accomplished implementing a cross-sell feature in Netsuite within the customer&#8217;s cart, and product detail pages and the results that came with it.</p>
  102. <h3>Overview</h3>
  103. <p>To start with a little background in how this project came up, the customers&#8217; site in which we were working with had a plethora of small related accessories and products that achieved the same result in a multitude of ways. However, most of these products were previously hidden deep inside specific, narrow categories given the nature of the sites&#8217; inventory. This was the ideal situation for a cross-sell opportunity, and since we had ample room on the product detail page (PDP) and cart pages, we chose those locations.</p>
  104. <h3>Manual Related Items</h3>
  105. <p>We utilized Netsuite&#8217;s underlying Related records feature. Items can be manual set/selected on inventory/assembly/service items alike. They can also be arranged in order of importance and display for use on product detail and cart pages.</p>
  106. <h3>Automatic Related Items</h3>
  107. <p>It would be quite a chore to go through and manually select each related item for EVERY record in your account. Luckily, our solution automatically builds and adds the related records to each item and you can still add, remove, and edit any automatically entered item.</p>
  108. <h3>Results</h3>
  109. <p>With any drastic change to a website&#8217;s main pages, you can <em>sometimes</em> experience an initial drop-off in existing customers&#8217; conversion rates and overall order value. This is due in part to them becoming frustrated over &#8220;change&#8221; in something that was previously comfortable to use. Thankfully this did not happen in our case, but to further alleviate this potential confounding variables we looked at the average order size a year <strong>before</strong> the cross-sell changes outlined above, and <strong>after</strong> implementing the cross-sell solution. We found that the Avg. Order Value <strong>increased by 11.29%</strong>! I believe we can chalk that up in the win category.</p>
  110. <div id="attachment_7456" style="width: 368px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/orderValue.png"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-7456" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-7456" src="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/orderValue.png" alt="Average Order Value Increase" width="358" height="88" srcset="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/orderValue.png 358w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/orderValue-300x74.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 358px) 100vw, 358px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-7456" class="wp-caption-text">Average Order Value Increase</p></div>
  111. <h3><strong>Conclusion</strong></h3>
  112. <p>If you have never thought about using upselling or cross-selling as a way to improve your company’s revenue, then what better time than now to start that initiative. Analytically speaking, upselling is more effective than cross-selling in terms of generating more revenue. However, it is not always practical to upsell given the product at hand being sold. There are cases when cross-selling makes more sense (like in our situation above), and there are also situations where <em>both</em> methods can be used together.</p>
  113. <p>If you are interested in which method is best for your application, please do not hesitate to <a href="https://www.fourthwc.com/contact-fourth-wave-consulting">reach out to us</a>. We are always more than happy to discuss your website goals / problems alike and how we could incorporate our solutions to satisfy them.</p>
  114. ]]></content:encoded>
  115. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2020/09/increase-revenue-with-upsells-and-cross-sells.html/feed</wfw:commentRss>
  116. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  117. </item>
  118. <item>
  119. <title>Netsuite 2020.2 Update: Data-center URL deprecation + What You Need To Know</title>
  120. <link>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2020/08/netsuite-2020-2-update-data-center-url-deprecation.html</link>
  121. <comments>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2020/08/netsuite-2020-2-update-data-center-url-deprecation.html#respond</comments>
  122. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kevin Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
  123. <pubDate>Sat, 08 Aug 2020 18:58:10 +0000</pubDate>
  124. <category><![CDATA[E-Commerce]]></category>
  125. <category><![CDATA[Netsuite]]></category>
  126. <category><![CDATA[2020.2]]></category>
  127. <category><![CDATA[accounting]]></category>
  128. <category><![CDATA[data center]]></category>
  129. <category><![CDATA[restlet]]></category>
  130. <category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
  131. <category><![CDATA[suitelet]]></category>
  132. <category><![CDATA[traffic]]></category>
  133. <category><![CDATA[Update]]></category>
  134. <category><![CDATA[Upgrade]]></category>
  135. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.fourthwc.com/?p=7305</guid>
  136.  
  137. <description><![CDATA[Netsuite 2020.2 is just around the corner, and as per usual, it brings with it a plethora of improvements, upgrades &#38; new features, and nuances. In this article post, we will go over some of the biggest features and updates to be both excited and wary of with the release of 2020.2. We got you [&#8230;]]]></description>
  138. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<a class="featured_image_link" href="https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2020/08/netsuite-2020-2-update-data-center-url-deprecation.html"><img width="2560" height="1437" src="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/taylor-vick-M5tzZtFCOfs-unsplash-scaled.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="202021.2 Data center Upgrade" decoding="async" loading="lazy" srcset="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/taylor-vick-M5tzZtFCOfs-unsplash-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/taylor-vick-M5tzZtFCOfs-unsplash-scaled-300x168.jpg 300w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/taylor-vick-M5tzZtFCOfs-unsplash-scaled-1024x575.jpg 1024w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/taylor-vick-M5tzZtFCOfs-unsplash-768x431.jpg 768w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/taylor-vick-M5tzZtFCOfs-unsplash-scaled-600x337.jpg 600w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/taylor-vick-M5tzZtFCOfs-unsplash-scaled-1536x862.jpg 1536w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/taylor-vick-M5tzZtFCOfs-unsplash-scaled-2048x1150.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" /></a>
  139. <p>Netsuite 2020.2 is just around the corner, and as per usual, it brings with it a plethora of improvements, upgrades &amp; new features, and nuances. In this article post, we will go over some of the biggest features and updates to be both excited and wary of with the release of 2020.2. We got you covered on how to prepare to ensure your business is ready for this new release and minimize any downtime.</p>
  140. <p><span id="more-7305"></span></p>
  141. <h3>Data Center Infrastructure Update</h3>
  142. <p>Data center-specific domains are targeted for deprecation! As of 2020.2, you MUST use account-specific domains or utilize dynamic methods to locate the correct domain to use for SOAP web services, RESTlets, external Suitelets, and external forms. What does this mean? In a nutshell &#8211; as of now you can call a Suitelet using a URL such as:</p>
  143. <p>https://12345.extforms.netsuite.com/app/site/hosting/scriptlet.nl?script=299&#038;deploy=1&#038;compid=12345&#038;h=49a6dcfd99769f1c31c4t</p>
  144. <p><em>or</em></p>
  145. <p>https://system.na1.netsuite.com/app/site/hosting/scriptlet.nl?script=299&#038;deploy=1&#038;compid=12345&#038;h=49a6dcfd99769f1c31c4</p>
  146. <p>However with the 2020.2  update, the latter URL format will break. Meaning any contact / custom form, RESTLET, suitelet, or 3rd party integrations using the old URL format to connect to Netsuite <em>will break</em> once the 2020.2 update goes live. This could be a huge problem, and <em>crucial</em> areas of your website or other functions could stop working when this change is enforced.</p>
  147. <p>There are two areas in NetSuite that can help track these things down:</p>
  148. <ol>
  149. <li class="m_-7866545990886884107MsoListParagraph">Setup &gt; company &gt; traffic health</li>
  150. <li>Setup &gt; company &gt; account mobility tasks</li>
  151. </ol>
  152. <p>The Traffic Health tool is available in NetSuite to help you find the use of data centre-specific URLs by the aforementioned services. Traffic Health now evaluates the NetSuite UI, Commerce sites, inbound email, and the File Cabinet to identify traffic that is using data centre-specific URLs in your account. It can be tricky to identify all the areas that might need updating, so <a href="/contact-fourth-wave-consulting">contact us</a> for help. </p>
  153. <h3>Accounting</h3>
  154. <p>NetSuite 2020.2 includes new accounting options to give you control over the generation of revenue recognition forecast plans. There’s also an update to The Currency Exchange Rate Types feature which lets you store <em>multiple</em> currency exchange rates for a currency pair and date. Previously, you could have only <em>one</em> exchange rate for each currency pair and date combination.</p>
  155. <p>Other accounting upgrades include:</p>
  156. <ul>
  157. <li>All balancing segments preferences and setup processes are now located in the Balancing Segments subtab in <em>Setup &gt; Accounting &gt; Accounting Preferences (Administrator)</em></li>
  158. <li>Print the general ledger impact for transactions from <em>all</em> accounting books, including secondary books.</li>
  159. <li>Filter and select which general ledger impact statements to print in bulk based on general ledger number, document number, or transaction number.</li>
  160. </ul>
  161. <h3>Banking</h3>
  162. <p>These updates focus mainly around automating the process of creating and matching account transactions with imported bank data. It includes the automatic creation of transactions based on bank import data. If there is a match, NetSuite will <em>automatically</em> create the specific transaction minimizing tasks around bank reconciliation. If you aren&#8217;t already using automated bank reconciliation, <a href="/contact-fourth-wave-consulting">let&#8217;s chat!</a> It is a huge time saver for your accounting folks. </p>
  163. <h3>Other Features</h3>
  164. <p>There are a number of other features being introduced in this update that we will not get into in this article. They are focused around, but not limited to: Global Subsidiary Management Features, significant Inventory &amp; order management upgrades, and other transaction features. For more information and a more detailed list of this features please visit the official Netsuite page related to this update:</p>
  165. <p><a href="https://www.netsuite.com/portal/landing/2020-2/main.shtml">https://www.netsuite.com/portal/landing/2020-2/main.shtml</a>. The full release notes can be found on the home page &#8216;new release&#8217; portlet on the home page after logging into your NetSuite account. </p>
  166. <h3>What To Do Before The Update</h3>
  167. <p>Before the 2020.2 release, you MUST update your integrations, RESTlets, external Suitelets, and any external forms in your production Netsuite account that are still using data centre-specific domains, or they will break! NetSuite kindly gives you the tools needed to identify the data centre-specific URLs within your account and to verify that any updates to these URLS are successful. See the help topic Traffic Health for information on locating data centre-specific URLs in your production account.</p>
  168. <p>If you are confused or worried about crucial areas of your site breaking during this upgrade, please <a href="https://www.fourthwc.com/contact-fourth-wave-consulting">contact us</a> and we will be more than glad to assist in keeping your website un-phased by this update.</p>
  169. ]]></content:encoded>
  170. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2020/08/netsuite-2020-2-update-data-center-url-deprecation.html/feed</wfw:commentRss>
  171. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  172. </item>
  173. <item>
  174. <title>Site Builder Performance Upgrades</title>
  175. <link>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2020/07/site-builder-performance-upgrades.html</link>
  176. <comments>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2020/07/site-builder-performance-upgrades.html#respond</comments>
  177. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kevin Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
  178. <pubDate>Sun, 19 Jul 2020 17:06:29 +0000</pubDate>
  179. <category><![CDATA[E-Commerce]]></category>
  180. <category><![CDATA[Netsuite]]></category>
  181. <category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization (SEO)]]></category>
  182. <category><![CDATA[Javascript]]></category>
  183. <category><![CDATA[performance]]></category>
  184. <category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>
  185. <category><![CDATA[Site Builder]]></category>
  186. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.fourthwc.com/?p=6995</guid>
  187.  
  188. <description><![CDATA[The time it takes to load a web page is called the page download speed, or load time. Your site&#8217;s average load time is an important factor in Google&#8217;s site ranking algorithm. Web users expect pages to load quickly, and pages with longer load times tend to have higher bounce rates, and those sites are [&#8230;]]]></description>
  189. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<a class="featured_image_link" href="https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2020/07/site-builder-performance-upgrades.html"><img width="194" height="132" src="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Screen-Shot-2020-07-13-at-1.04.59-PM.png" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" /></a>
  190. <p>The time it takes to load a web page is called the page download speed, or load time. Your site&#8217;s average load time is an important factor in Google&#8217;s site ranking algorithm. Web users expect pages to load quickly, and pages with longer load times tend to have higher bounce rates, and those sites are seen as less important. For more information on the effect of site performance and organic rankings and conversion, see Cloudflares article on <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/performance/more/website-performance-conversion-rates/">Website Performance and Conversation Rates</a>.</p>
  191. <p>To measure site speed, Google released a SEO tool called Lighthouse back in 2018 that offers some insight on the performance of your website and its pages. This audit gives a mobile and desktop score across four areas: Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO. For the sake of this article, we will be focusing on solely the &#8220;Performance&#8221; category of the testing and its associated fixes. So, let&#8217;s dive in!</p>
  192. <p><span id="more-6995"></span></p>
  193. <h3>Performance</h3>
  194. <p>This area is scoring based on factors such as:</p>
  195. <ul>
  196. <li>How long it takes your webpage to first &#8220;begin&#8221; loading. This is known as the &#8220;first contentful paint&#8221; or &#8220;first meaningful paint&#8221;. This is usually based solely on the server and it&#8217;s performance, we will ignore this metric in this post since we can&#8217;t do anything about it in Site Builder.</li>
  197. <li>How many render-blocking elements such as scripts, fonts, etc. are in the head and must finish loading before the browser can start to draw the page.</li>
  198. <li>Are your javascript and other resources &#8220;minified&#8221; and compressed?</li>
  199. <li>Do you defer &#8220;offscreen images&#8221;? Also called &#8220;lazy loading&#8221;</li>
  200. <li>Do you serve properly sizes images? Are they properly compressed?</li>
  201. </ul>
  202. <h3>What Can We Do?</h3>
  203. <p>Call a web development professional! In all seriousness, you will need to, but lets go over some things in the meantime.</p>
  204. <h3>Header and Footer: Common Files/Scripts</h3>
  205. <p>We recently optimized the Site Builder site <a href="https://www.ohmyarthritis.com/Learn/">www.OhMyArthritis.com</a> and will explain our process using it as an example. When we examined the common scripts, we found them to be dispersed throughout the header and footer. Remember that each separate request in the &#60;head&#62; to a  script or file is going to add to our &#8220;render-blocking&#8221; scripts, and thus increase page load time.</p>
  206. <p>To alleviate this and increase our improvements in lighthouse performance score, we needed to:</p>
  207. <ol>
  208. <li><strong>LOAD</strong>. All of our libraries for our fonts, jQuery version, and other scripts <em>locally </em>rather than from an external URL</li>
  209. <li><strong>COMBINE</strong>. There were 6-7 <em>separate</em> javascript files being loaded, we combined them all into <em>one</em>, which reduces the number of requests going over the network. While combining, we were able to eliminate multiple function and event listeners which also improves page scores.</li>
  210. <li><strong>PRELOAD</strong>. By appending a special attribute to our javascript and style files, we can <em>preload</em> them from the head, which is not render-blocking, and then load them again after the entire page has loaded.</li>
  211. <li><strong>MINIFY</strong>. All of the pre-existing javascript was not production ready as it was not minified. We ran all javascript libraries and common functions through a minification library which helps with browser render times and decreases page/file sizes.</li>
  212. </ol>
  213. <h3>Lazy Loading Images &#8220;Below The Fold&#8221;</h3>
  214. <p>There are a few ways to lazy load images when they become in view. One way is to use the new built-in native browser support (supported by modern versions of IE Edge, FireFox, Chrome, and Opera), the other two involve javascript libraries such as loZad and the intersection observer API. We opted for a hybrid approach using <em>both</em> the built-in browser support, and a fallback javascript library.</p>
  215. <p>If lazy loading is not supported or recognized in the browser, then a javascript library (in this case <a href="https://afarkas.github.io/lazysizes/index.html">LazySizes</a>) takes care of it using regular JavaScript.</p>
  216. <h3>Image Optimization</h3>
  217. <p>To optimize our images and save on overall page load size, which is the biggest factor in speed and performance of a web page, we needed to:</p>
  218. <ul>
  219. <li>Download <em>all</em> of the images use on our website</li>
  220. <li>Process these through an image optimization library which, on average, saves anywhere from 25-45% of image file size (depending on what compression already existed)</li>
  221. <li>Ensure no loss to visual quality and re-upload</li>
  222. </ul>
  223. <p>Our entire image folder ended up being compressed by a total of 30%, and we ended up saving ~82mb off our total image folder size! Mark that up in the win column.</p>
  224. <h3>Results</h3>
  225. <p>One interesting I noticed while auditing using the Lighthouse performance tool, was that it was <em>all</em> over the board in terms of numbers. This made it difficult to focus on the metrics we can control. First paint and other server-response times ranged from 6s to 43s during testing. To alleviate an unsatisfying / inaccurate report on our performance work, I took 3 tests before (for mobile and desktop) and after our upgrades mentioned above. This gave us a good mean, average score.</p>
  226. <p>We wanted to test a set of pages that would cover all features that exist on the site. To accomplish this we chose to test:</p>
  227. <ol>
  228. <li>The Homepage</li>
  229. <li>A Category Page</li>
  230. <li>Two Product Pages</li>
  231. <li>A Content Page</li>
  232. </ol>
  233. <table cellspacing="5">
  234. <tr>
  235. <td>
  236. <h3>Before</h3>
  237. <ol>
  238. <li>Homepage
  239. <ul>
  240. <li>Mobile: 14</li>
  241. <li>Desktop: 22</li>
  242. </ul>
  243. </li>
  244. <li>Category Pages
  245. <ul>
  246. <li>Mobile: 20</li>
  247. <li>Desktop: 11</li>
  248. </ul>
  249. </li>
  250. <li>Product Page
  251. <ul>
  252. <li>Mobile: 20</li>
  253. <li>Desktop: 11</li>
  254. </ul>
  255. </li>
  256. <li>Content Page
  257. <ul>
  258. <li>Mobile: 24</li>
  259. <li>Desktop: 2</li>
  260. </ul>
  261. </li>
  262. </ol>
  263. </td>
  264. <td>&nbsp;</td>
  265. <td>
  266. <h3>After</h3>
  267. <ol>
  268. <li>Homepage
  269. <ul>
  270. <li>Mobile: 42</li>
  271. <li>Desktop: 48</li>
  272. </ul>
  273. </li>
  274. <li>Category Pages
  275. <ul>
  276. <li>Mobile: 39</li>
  277. <li>Desktop: 41</li>
  278. </ul>
  279. </li>
  280. <li>Product Page
  281. <ul>
  282. <li>Mobile: 39</li>
  283. <li>Desktop: 20</li>
  284. </ul>
  285. </li>
  286. <li>Content Page
  287. <ul>
  288. <li>Mobile: 37</li>
  289. <li>Desktop: 27</li>
  290. </ul>
  291. </li>
  292. </ol>
  293. </td>
  294. </tr>
  295. </table>
  296. <h3>Improvement!</h3>
  297. <p>You can see there was a definite improvement across the board, we are happy! Don&#8217;t mind the size of the scores during testing, there are some scripts and other things that are causing other issues at the moment which is drastically bringing down the numbers.</p>
  298. <p>You can see we took our render-blocking resources line item from in some cases taking 3s+ to an average of 0.84s!</p>
  299. <div id="attachment_7140" style="width: 204px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Screen-Shot-2020-07-13-at-1.04.59-PM.png"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-7140" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-7140 size-full" src="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Screen-Shot-2020-07-13-at-1.04.59-PM.png" alt="" width="194" height="132" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-7140" class="wp-caption-text">Average page load time across all pages, current vs previous month.</p></div>
  300. <h3>&#8220;Un-controllables&#8221;</h3>
  301. <div>I did a little more research after re-testing and found that Google released an update to Lighthouse at the beginning of June which adjusted the weights of the different metrics (<a href="https://web.dev/lighthouse-whats-new-6.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://web.dev/lighthouse-whats-new-6.0/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1594702115857000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE7yWaoTbCt8xgcUXVJbeOugLxOzw">https://web.dev/lighthouse-<wbr />whats-new-6.0/</a>), and other developers and marketers were experiencing lower-than-normal scores as well.</div>
  302. <div></div>
  303. <div>There were still a couple of items that were glaring when taking a closer look at the numbers:</div>
  304. <div>
  305. <ol>
  306. <li><b> Third-Party Scripts: </b>Facebook, Hotjar, Hubspot, Pinterest, Bing Ads, Tawk.to, analytics, etc. were contributing a half-second to the initial load time.</li>
  307. <li> <b>Script</b> <b>Execution Time: </b> LeadFlows, collectedforms.js, facebook, <a href="https://getsitecontrol.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://getsitecontrol.com&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1594702115857000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEWj29tBDANxLrq1ZXYir6IzISE7A">getsitecontrol.com</a> were contributing about a second of <i>execution</i> time.</li>
  308. </ol>
  309. <div>Other than the above &#8211; this was really the best we could offer in terms of performance upgrades. We are in the green at 2.3s for Time To Interactive on the homepage, which is a good sign in terms of server performance of which we don&#8217;t have control over in NetSuite.</div>
  310. </div>
  311. <div></div>
  312. <div>One method to boost server performance without directly touching the server itself is through implementing CloudFlare, a content delivery network service. For more on that service please see our other article which explains it in much greater detail, <a href="https://fourthwc.com/netsuite/2017/05/site-builder-site-secure-https-throughout.html#more-1274">Make Your Netsuite Site Builder Site Secure &#8211; HTTPS Throughout</a>.</div>
  313. <h3>Conclusion</h3>
  314. <p>The entirety of what has been explained thus far is just scratching the surface on a 3-phase performance optimization project and there is much, much more that can be done. Over time, it&#8217;s only natural your website begins to accumulate a staggering amount of marketing tracking scripts (FB Pixel, lead forms, etc), javascript libraries, fonts, and other random additions to your templates by marketers, developers, and admins alike. Through this performance process it also doubles as a time to ask yourself  &#8220;is this needed?&#8221;, performance is almost always <em>clean. </em></p>
  315. <h3>Contact us for a Quote</h3>
  316. <p>We have become expert at getting the most out of Site Builder, and are happy to supply examples &#038; references. <a href="https://www.fourthwc.com/contact-fourth-wave-consulting">Contact us</a> for a quote to optimize your Site Builder site &#8211; the improvements will pay for themselves through better organic rankings and conversion rates!<br />
  317. &nbsp;</p>
  318. ]]></content:encoded>
  319. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2020/07/site-builder-performance-upgrades.html/feed</wfw:commentRss>
  320. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  321. </item>
  322. <item>
  323. <title>NetSuite Announces Plans to End Promotion Functionality for Site Builder</title>
  324. <link>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2020/01/netsuite-ends-promotions-for-site-builder.html</link>
  325. <comments>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2020/01/netsuite-ends-promotions-for-site-builder.html#respond</comments>
  326. <dc:creator><![CDATA[David Norris]]></dc:creator>
  327. <pubDate>Thu, 16 Jan 2020 22:34:56 +0000</pubDate>
  328. <category><![CDATA[Netsuite]]></category>
  329. <category><![CDATA[E-Commerce]]></category>
  330. <category><![CDATA[Site Builder]]></category>
  331. <category><![CDATA[SuiteCommerce]]></category>
  332. <category><![CDATA[SuitePromotions]]></category>
  333. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.fourthwc.com/?p=5834</guid>
  334.  
  335. <description><![CDATA[Existing Functionality to be Preserved Until at Least 2022 A brief history of promotions in NetSuite: Standard Promotions were the only option at first, allowing basic promotions to be created and offered in Site Builder or phone orders like a % off coupon code. This functionality is pretty basic. In 2014, NetSuite released a SuiteBundle [&#8230;]]]></description>
  336. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Existing Functionality to be Preserved Until at Least 2022</h2>
  337. <p> A brief history of promotions in NetSuite:</p>
  338. <ol>
  339. <li>Standard Promotions were the only option at first, allowing basic promotions to be created and offered in Site Builder or phone orders like a % off coupon code. This functionality is pretty basic. </li>
  340. <li>In 2014, NetSuite released a SuiteBundle (a free package that users could install in their account) to support more types of promotions &#8211; line level promos allowing a single item to ship free, order based criteria, and things like Buy X, get Y  free. This new functionality was welcomed and supported Site Builder. </li>
  341. <li>Around 2017, NetSuite began offering a new feature called <a href="https://developers.suitecommerce.com/section4737596252">SuitePromotions</a>, with lots of new functionality:
  342. <ul>
  343. <li>Stackable Promotions </li>
  344. <li> Auto-Apply Promotions </li>
  345. <li> Best Offer </li>
  346. <li> Cached Saved Searches </li>
  347. <li> Audit and Visibility </li>
  348. <li> Automatically Add Free Gift to the Transaction</li>
  349. </ul>
  350. <p>    The new feature is not compatible with the previous promotions &#8211; You can have both active in your system, but could only apply either a SuitePromotion or one of the others to an order, not both. The other major downside is that <strong>SuitePromotions can&#8217;t be used on Site Builder</strong>, where the vast majority of NetSuite companies host their sites. </li>
  351. <li>In November 2019, NetSuite announced that they will be removing standard and advanced promotions completely. <span id="more-5834"></span>
  352. <p>Any company using Site Builder or an earlier version of SuiteCommerce Advanced (before Elbrus, released in Spring 2017) would have to build an entire replacement for their website in a new version of SuiteCommerce Standard or Advanced (SCA) if they want to be able to offer any kind of promotions after the sunset date, which has not been announced. Early adopters of SCA who built a site in the 4 years before Elbrus was released are also being forced to upgrade, which can be very expensive due to the many architectural changes made to the platform since then. Not to mention they just spent quite a bit of money to build the new site in the first place. </li>
  353. </ol>
  354. <p>Now, when creating a new standard or advanced promotion, NetSuite users see this warning:<br />
  355. <span><strong>Notice &#8211; SuitePromotions</strong><br />
  356. This type of promotion does not benefit from the new enhancements introduced with SuitePromotions. You can continue using such promotions on transactions, but please note they cannot take advantage of these enhancements. For details, see the help topic <a href="https://system.netsuite.com/app/help/helpcenter.nl?fid=section_4737596252.html">Promotions Overview</a> (SuiteAnswers ID: 63010).<br />
  357. Customers who cannot migrate to SuitePromotions on their current eCommerce setup should consider upgrading to a higher version of SuiteCommerce. Support for Site Builder customers and customers on a SuiteCommerce version older than Elbrus will continue until 2022 at the earliest.</span>
  358. </p>
  359. <h2>So What Are My Options Now?</h2>
  360. <p>NetSuite is pressuring companies to move off Site Builder, but without risking the bad press of actually providing a drop-dead date. For any company using Site Builder or pre-Elbrus SCA that wants to keep offering promotions to its customers (which is basically all of them, in my experience), there are 3 choices:</p>
  361. <ol>
  362. <li>Buy a license for SuiteCommerce Advanced ($5k/month) and build a new site on it (implementations run 50-100k+).
  363. </li>
  364. <li>Buy SuiteCommerce (formerly SuiteCommerce Standard), a more limited version that is $2500/month. This is a new platform but I&#8217;ve seen quotes from 20-40k+ to implement.</li>
  365. <li>Use a data connector like those provided by Farapp or Celigo and build a new site on a 3rd party platform like Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, etc. Costs vary widely, starting from $175/month for the connector. </li>
  366. </ol>
  367. <p>There is a lot to consider when building a new site that your company will be depending on for years to come. I&#8217;ll be posting a high level comparison of these options soon. Each company should carefully document its requirements for a web site before evaluating any of these options. Otherwise, the mentality becomes one of trying to make option X  work, which can leave out important considerations and needs that could be overlooked until after the contract has been signed.
  368. </p>
  369. <h2>We Are Here to Help</h2>
  370. <p>Our team has more than 15 years of web development each, with a wide variety of platforms. Our goal is to help you find the best solution for your needs, not sell you what works best for us. A new site can often take a year to plan and build, so it&#8217;s important to start the requirements process early. <a href="https://www.fourthwc.com/contact-fourth-wave-consulting">Get in touch</a> with us to review your situation with no commitment. </p>
  371. <p>Here is the notice NetSuite emailed to customers:
  372. </p>
  373. <table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="600">
  374. <tr>
  375. <td>
  376. <div align="center">
  377. <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
  378. <tr>
  379. <td>
  380. <p><strong>Support Ending for Standard and Advanced Promotions</strong></p>
  381. </td>
  382. </tr>
  383. </table></div>
  384. <div align="center">
  385. <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
  386. <tr>
  387. <td>
  388. <p align="center"><strong>Your NetSuite Account ID: 3750282</strong></p>
  389. </td>
  390. </tr>
  391. </table></div>
  392. <div align="center">
  393. <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
  394. <tr>
  395. <td valign="top">
  396. <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
  397. <tr>
  398. <td>
  399. <p>You are receiving this notice because you currently have standard and Advanced promotions set up in your NetSuite account. NetSuite will soon discontinue support for standard promotions and promotions created using the Advanced Promotions SuiteApp.<br />
  400.                      <strong>What is Changing?</strong> <br />
  401.                      Users will begin seeing  information banners when creating standard promotions or promotions using the Advanced Promotions SuiteApp. These banners will appear on the promotion form to notify users that support for these promotion types will soon become unavailable.<br />
  402.                      The promotion codes already setup will keep working for a period of time. You will receive another notice when the end of support date is finalized.<br />
  403.                      <strong>Why is NetSuite Making These Changes?</strong> <br />
  404.                      Standard and Advanced promotions are being superseded by SuitePromotions.<br />
  405.                      SuitePromotions offer improvements that include a faster and more reliable engine. With SuitePromotions, you can take advantage of enhancements not supported by the legacy promotion tools, such as stackable promotions, auto-apply, best logic, free gift, and more.<br />
  406.                      For details on the enhancements included with SuitePromotions, see the help topic <strong>Promotions Overview (SuiteAnswers ID: 63010)</strong>.<br />
  407.                      <strong>Recommended Actions</strong> <br />
  408.                      We strongly advise users that all new promotions should be created using SuitePromotions only.<br />
  409.                      If you use existing standard and Advanced promotions in your NetSuite environment, we encourage you to start replacing them with SuitePromotions now, before support is discontinued.<br />
  410.                      For information on setting up SuitePromotions, see the help topic <strong>Promotions (SuiteAnswers ID: 63003)</strong>. For more information regarding migrating to SuitePromotions, see the help topic <strong>Migrating to SuitePromotions (SuiteAnswers ID: 70348)</strong>.<br />
  411.                      <strong>Note: </strong>Customers using SiteBuilder or SuiteCommerce versions older than Elbrus should consider upgrading to a higher version of SuiteCommerce in order to be able to use SuitePromotions on their web stores. See the help topic <strong>Known Limitations of SuitePromotions on Commerce Web Stores (SuiteAnswers ID: 62520)</strong>. <br />
  412.                      If you have any questions or if you need further assistance, please contact NetSuite Customer Support.<br />
  413.                      Thank you,<br />
  414.                      The NetSuite Team</p>
  415. </td>
  416. </tr>
  417. </table>
  418. </td>
  419. </tr>
  420. </table></div>
  421. </td>
  422. </tr>
  423. </table>
  424. <p>Questions? Let us know in the comments below. </p>
  425. ]]></content:encoded>
  426. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2020/01/netsuite-ends-promotions-for-site-builder.html/feed</wfw:commentRss>
  427. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  428. </item>
  429. <item>
  430. <title>Protect Your Online Forms from Bots &#038; Spam</title>
  431. <link>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2019/10/google-recaptcha-online-forms.html</link>
  432. <comments>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2019/10/google-recaptcha-online-forms.html#respond</comments>
  433. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kevin Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
  434. <pubDate>Tue, 22 Oct 2019 07:16:24 +0000</pubDate>
  435. <category><![CDATA[E-Commerce]]></category>
  436. <category><![CDATA[Netsuite]]></category>
  437. <category><![CDATA[PCs & Technology]]></category>
  438. <category><![CDATA[bot]]></category>
  439. <category><![CDATA[captcha]]></category>
  440. <category><![CDATA[form]]></category>
  441. <category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
  442. <category><![CDATA[Popular Projects]]></category>
  443. <category><![CDATA[recaptcha]]></category>
  444. <category><![CDATA[Site Builder]]></category>
  445. <category><![CDATA[submission]]></category>
  446. <category><![CDATA[SuiteCommerce]]></category>
  447. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.fourthwc.com/?p=5402</guid>
  448.  
  449. <description><![CDATA[Use Google&#8217;s reCAPTCHA Service Without Annoying Your Users As a site owner, marketer, or developer you are well accustomed to seeing fake or bot form submissions, which can be quite an annoyance and potentially time intensive depending on the severity. Luckily there are proven, modern solutions to this sort of problem: form captchas. There are [&#8230;]]]></description>
  450. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<a class="featured_image_link" href="https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2019/10/google-recaptcha-online-forms.html"><img width="895" height="370" src="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/captchaV1.png" class="attachment-full size-full wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" loading="lazy" srcset="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/captchaV1.png 895w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/captchaV1-300x124.png 300w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/captchaV1-768x317.png 768w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/captchaV1-600x248.png 600w" sizes="(max-width: 895px) 100vw, 895px" /></a>
  451.  
  452. <h3>Use Google&#8217;s reCAPTCHA Service Without Annoying Your Users</h3>
  453. <p>As a site owner, marketer, or developer you are well accustomed to seeing fake or bot form submissions, which can be quite an annoyance and potentially time intensive depending on the severity. Luckily there are proven, modern solutions to this sort of problem: form captchas. There are many types of captchas but in the basic sense; a captcha test is designed to determine if an online user is really a human and not a bot. The most popular captcha is reCAPTCHA by Google. reCAPTCHA is a free service from Google that helps protect websites from spam and abuse. A “CAPTCHA” is a Turing test to tell human and bots apart. It is easy for humans to solve, but hard for “bots” and other malicious software to figure out. You may recall older (v1) versions o the reCAPTCHA looking something like this:</p>
  454.  
  455.  
  456.  
  457. <figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="300" height="124" class="wp-image-5403" src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/captchaV1-300x124.png" alt="" srcset="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/captchaV1-300x124.png 300w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/captchaV1-768x317.png 768w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/captchaV1-600x248.png 600w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/captchaV1.png 895w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></figure>
  458.  
  459. <p>These were quite frustrating because they were often difficult for humans to resolve. The V2 reCAPTCHA has been improved<span id="more-5402"></span>
  460.  
  461. to be more user friendly while still being effective at wedding out bot submissions:</p>
  462.  
  463. <figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="616" height="164" class="wp-image-5404" src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/captchav2.gif" alt="" /></figure>
  464.  
  465. <p>CAPTCHAs play an important role in keeping the internet spam-free and making everyone’s experience a little bit better. reCAPTCHA also makes positive use of the human effort spent in solving CAPTCHAs by using the solutions to digitize text, annotate images, and build machine-learning datasets. This in turn helps preserve books, improve maps, and solve hard AI problems. Pretty neat!</p>
  466. <p><strong>Pro Tip</strong>: If you wiggle your mouse back and forth after checking the checkbox, you have a greater chance of NOT having to solve the puzzles! This is because the Captcha takes in many data points (browsing history, IP, etc.) to calculate its score and “human-link mouse movement” is one of the attributes your human score is calculated from. The more data points, the higher your score is and thus not having to provide additional information (matching games, etc.).</p>
  467. <h4><b>NetSuite Forms are Vulnerable</b></h4>
  468. <p>Whether you&#8217;re using Site Builder, SuiteCommerce Advanced, or SuiteCommerce Standard, NetSuite supports adding forms to your website &#8211; either an online customer form or online case form. A customer form would typically be used for a newsletter signup, while the case form is more for &#8216;contact us&#8217; forms that use the support case feature in NetSuite to track the communication. If you use any of these forms, they are susceptible to getting spammed by the millions of bots that are constantly looking for forms to enter their spam into. </p>
  469. <p>We at Fourth Wave Consulting have heard from a few companies that have recently been getting hit hard by spam bots, and have developed a custom solution to make your NetSuite forms (including Suitelets) spam resistant using Google&#8217;s free reCaptcha service. Bots are always getting smarter, so defeating them is a constant arms race. We use 3 different approaches in our solution to make it as hard as we can for any automated tool to successful submit the form.
  470. Your form submit function will be disabled entirely, both by users and bots until the Captcha is solved / approved (and most of your users will just need to check a box). Once the Captcha has passed, the form is able to be submitted. The success rate in blocking form submissions using a secure callback from Google’s reCAPTCHA API has been very high in our experience over the years.</p>
  471. <p>We highly recommend all of your web forms have some sort of Captcha protection. Our reCAPTCHA solutions are ready to be applied to your website, <a href="/contact-fourth-wave-consulting">let us know</a> if you still have unprotected forms and we can cut the spam off at the source.</p>
  472. <!-- /wp:html -->]]></content:encoded>
  473. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2019/10/google-recaptcha-online-forms.html/feed</wfw:commentRss>
  474. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  475. </item>
  476. <item>
  477. <title>What to know about schema.org and microdata tagging</title>
  478. <link>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2019/05/what-to-know-about-schema-org-and-microdata-tagging.html</link>
  479. <comments>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2019/05/what-to-know-about-schema-org-and-microdata-tagging.html#respond</comments>
  480. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kevin Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
  481. <pubDate>Thu, 02 May 2019 17:37:44 +0000</pubDate>
  482. <category><![CDATA[Netsuite]]></category>
  483. <category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization (SEO)]]></category>
  484. <category><![CDATA[Tools]]></category>
  485. <category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
  486. <category><![CDATA[JSON+ld]]></category>
  487. <category><![CDATA[microdata]]></category>
  488. <category><![CDATA[schema.org]]></category>
  489. <category><![CDATA[Site Builder]]></category>
  490. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.fourthwc.com/?p=4637</guid>
  491.  
  492. <description><![CDATA[Why Should You Care About Microdata? Before we get into more detail, you should probably be asking yourself why you would even care about microdata as a business owner, the answer is &#8211; Rich Snippets &#038; Google Shopping. By adding hidden microdata tags to your pages, products and other entities of your site, you make [&#8230;]]]></description>
  493. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  494. <h3>Why Should You Care About Microdata?</h3>
  495. <p>Before we get into more detail, you should probably be asking yourself why you would even care about microdata as a business owner, the answer is &#8211; Rich Snippets &#038; Google Shopping.</p>
  496. <p>By adding hidden microdata tags to your pages, products and other entities of your site, you make them more attractive to the user in Google search. For example, a regular search snippet looks like this:</p>
  497.  
  498.  
  499.  
  500. <figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="205" src="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-02-at-3.23.30-PM-1024x205.png" alt="" class="wp-image-4656" srcset="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-02-at-3.23.30-PM-1024x205.png 1024w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-02-at-3.23.30-PM-300x60.png 300w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-02-at-3.23.30-PM-768x154.png 768w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-02-at-3.23.30-PM-600x120.png 600w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-02-at-3.23.30-PM.png 1356w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>
  501.  
  502.  
  503.  
  504. <p>Whereas a page with microdata will appear as a rich snippet and look more like this:</p>
  505.  
  506.  
  507.  
  508. <figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1024" height="469" src="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/snippet-example-1024x469.png" alt="" class="wp-image-4655" srcset="https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/snippet-example-1024x469.png 1024w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/snippet-example-300x137.png 300w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/snippet-example-768x352.png 768w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/snippet-example-600x275.png 600w, https://www.fourthwc.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/snippet-example.png 1955w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>
  509.  
  510.  
  511.  
  512. <p>A lot more attractive, right? Which one would you rather click on? By making your products and pages more attractive, you immediately increase your clickthrough rate and your overall site visitors.</p>
  513. <p>To add to the importance of microdata, it is an important component to Google Shopping. Google Ads (formerly Adwords) allows you to create shopping campaigns based on a product feed that you send to them (which we can help with if needed), and they want to verify that the data is correct by checking your product pages. Google uses your microdata tagging to confirm price and other important data, a necessary part of a successful shopping campaign.</p>
  514.  
  515. <p>Microdata and schema markup might be the single most important thing you can do to increase sales and visitors to your site.</p>
  516. <h3>What Is &#8220;schema markup&#8221;?</h3>
  517. <p>Schema (schema.org) is a structured data vocabulary that defines entities, actions, and relationships on the Internet founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex and widely adopted across the web (over 10 million sites use it)</p>
  518. <p>This vocabulary makes it possible for search engines to understand the meanings behind subject matter (entities) on the web, and in turn, serve a better user experience for users.</p>
  519. <p>As Google continues to build a more semantic web, these markups become increasingly valuable in effective Internet communication.</p>
  520. <span id="more-4637"></span>
  521. <p>If you want to learn more about what schema markup and micro data is and what it offers I invite you to read the following articles to get a better understanding:</p>
  522. <p>
  523.    <a href="https://www.semrush.com/blog/what-is-schema-beginner-s-guide-to-structured-data/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">What is Schema? Beginner‘s Guide to Structured Data</a>
  524. </p>
  525. <p>
  526.    <a href="https://neilpatel.com/blog/get-started-using-schema/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">How to Boost Your SEO by Using Schema Markup</a>
  527. </p>
  528. <p>
  529.    <a href="https://moz.com/learn/seo/schema-structured-data" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Schema.org Markup</a>
  530. </p>
  531. <p>
  532.    <a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/schema-101-improve-seo-results/204858/#close" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">What is Schema Markup &amp; Why It’s Important for SEO</a>
  533. </p>
  534. <h3>How Schema Markup and Microdata Have Changed Over The Years</h3>
  535. <p>In the beginning, the only form of Schema markup was via embedded microdata. Now what you might be asking &#8211; what do you even mean by &#8220;micro data&#8221;? Directly from <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data#markup-formats-and-placement">Google</a> it is defined by &#8220;An open-community HTML specification used to nest structured data within HTML content. It uses HTML tag attributes to name the properties you want to expose as structured data. It is typically used in the page body, but can be used in the head.&#8221;</p>
  536. <p>So what does this look like? Let&#8217;s take a look at an example for a single product on a product detail page:</p>
  537.  
  538.  
  539.  
  540. <pre class="wp-block-code"><code>&lt;div itemtype="https://schema.org/Product" itemscope="">
  541.                &lt;meta itemprop="mpn" content="925872">
  542.                &lt;meta itemprop="name" content="Executive Anvil">
  543.                &lt;link itemprop="image" href="https://example.com/photos/16x9/photo.jpg">
  544.                &lt;meta itemprop="description" content="Sleeker than ACME's Classic Anvil, the Executive Anvil is perfect for the business traveler looking for something to drop from a height.">
  545.                &lt;div itemprop="offers" itemtype="https://schema.org/Offer" itemscope="">
  546.                    &lt;link itemprop="url" href="https://example.com/anvil">
  547.                    &lt;meta itemprop="availability" content="https://schema.org/InStock">
  548.                    &lt;meta itemprop="priceCurrency" content="USD">
  549.                    &lt;meta itemprop="itemCondition" content="https://schema.org/UsedCondition">
  550.                    &lt;meta itemprop="price" content="119.99">
  551.                &lt;/div>
  552.                &lt;meta itemprop="sku" content="0446310786">
  553.                &lt;div itemprop="brand" itemtype="https://schema.org/Thing" itemscope="">
  554.                    &lt;meta itemprop="name" content="ACME">
  555.                &lt;/div>
  556.            &lt;/div></code></pre>
  557.  
  558.  
  559.  
  560. <p>As you can see &#8211; the markup includes tags such as <strong>meta</strong> and <strong>link</strong> tags. This is so the markup doesn&#8217;t actually get rendered on the page itself. The main point here is that the markup is nested as attributes in regular HTML tags.</p>
  561. <p>This markup was the only method available for schema.org data up until 4 or 5 years ago, and up until 2 or 3 years ago it was the preferred format. That is, until the new standard format &#8220;JSON-LD&#8221; came out. Google now recommends using JSON-LD for structured data whenever possible and prefers this method over embedded microdata.</p>
  562. <p>Along with a new form of markup, new fields were created and suggested to be used by Google. Such fields include: <strong>URL</strong>, <strong>priceValidUntil</strong>, and <strong>priceValidUntil</strong>. Google also now strongly recommends the <strong>aggregateRating</strong> itemtype along with its set of fields as well.</p>
  563. <h3>Testing Your Data &#8211; Structured Data Testing Tool</h3>
  564. <p>Products that do not have the above fields are flagged with warnings when using Google&#8217;s official <a href="https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Structure Data Testing Tool</a>. Are your product detail pages passing without warnings or errors? Are you including all of the suggested fields for not only your product detail pages, but your organizational data on your homepage ONLY as well? I welcome you to try the tool out on a couple of pages and see how your micro data is holding up.</p>
  565. <h3>What Does JSON-LD Look Like</h3>
  566. <p>By now you are likely wondering how the JSON-LD format differs from traditional micro data</p>
  567. <p>If we take the same product itemtype micro data example above, in JSON-LD format, it looks something like:</p>
  568.  
  569.  
  570.  
  571. <pre class="wp-block-code"><code>&lt;script type="application/ld+json">
  572.    {
  573.        "@context": "https://schema.org/",
  574.        "@type": "Product",
  575.        "name": "Executive Anvil",
  576.        "image": [
  577.            "https://example.com/photos/1x1/photo.jpg",
  578.            "https://example.com/photos/4x3/photo.jpg",
  579.            "https://example.com/photos/16x9/photo.jpg"
  580.        ],
  581.        "description": "Sleeker than ACME's Classic Anvil, the Executive Anvil is perfect for the business traveler looking for something to drop from a height.",
  582.        "sku": "0446310786",
  583.        "mpn": "925872",
  584.        "brand": {
  585.            "@type": "Thing",
  586.            "name": "ACME"
  587.        },
  588.        "review": {
  589.            "@type": "Review",
  590.            "reviewRating": {
  591.                "@type": "Rating",
  592.                "ratingValue": "4",
  593.                "bestRating": "5"
  594.            },
  595.            "author": {
  596.                "@type": "Person",
  597.                "name": "Fred Benson"
  598.            }
  599.        },
  600.        "aggregateRating": {
  601.            "@type": "AggregateRating",
  602.            "ratingValue": "4.4",
  603.            "reviewCount": "89"
  604.        },
  605.        "offers": {
  606.            "@type": "Offer",
  607.            "url": "https://example.com/anvil",
  608.            "priceCurrency": "USD",
  609.            "price": "119.99",
  610.            "priceValidUntil": "2020-11-05",
  611.            "itemCondition": "https://schema.org/UsedCondition",
  612.            "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
  613.            "seller": {
  614.                "@type": "Organization",
  615.                "name": "Executive Objects"
  616.            }
  617.        }
  618.    }
  619. &lt;/script></code></pre>
  620.  
  621.  
  622.  
  623. <p>You can see the new fields have been added, and the format is in a JavaScript Object Notation rather than standard HTML markup &#8211; which makes implementation easier to manage.</p>
  624. <h3>YOTPO Product Reviews and The Problems It Presents</h3>
  625. <p>YOTPO is a very common e-commerce marketing cloud tool which provides a convenient way to store reviews and review information about your products. We see a number of NetSuite SiteBuilder customers using YOTPO to drive their reviews for their products, and rightfully so.</p>
  626. <p>However &#8211; YOTPO presents a problem on product pages that most customers aren&#8217;t aware of. The YOTPO script injects it&#8217;s own schema markup on the page (via JSON-lD after page load) for product reviews and ratings. The JSON-LD script it injects is entirely different than the existing schema markup. however even though it may be using the same product name, url, etc.</p>
  627. <p>If you view a product detail page with the YOTPO script and existing schema markup &#8211; you will notice that it appears as two different entities and is therefore incomplete data, which Google views as a problem. This is bad news because all of that hard work you or your developer may have done previously do put this data in place, is now deemed as invalid.</p>
  628. <p>The only way to turn off this feature is to contact YOTPO directly and have them disable it for your account. However &#8211; that leaves us without all of that useful review and rating data! Fortunately, at Fourth Wave Consulting, we have a nifty solution for this! We have developed a script that uses YOTPO&#8217;s API endpoint to retrieve every product&#8217;s review and rating data on a nightly basis, stores it in NetSuite fields, and correctly presents all of your schema markup correctly in a single JSON-LD script. All according to Google&#8217;s standards</p>
  629. <p>Is YOTPO injecting it&#8217;s markup separate from your existing product data? Find out by using the <a href="https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Structured Data Testing Tool</a></p>
  630. <h3>Conclusion &#8211; Getting It Right</h3>
  631. <p>Structured data markup is a finnicky process, and it has to be presented 100% correctly in order for it to work. One false comma, one misspelled word, and the entire dataset won&#8217;t pass as correct by Google and thus won&#8217;t be indexed.</p>
  632. <p>This rich detailed product information has come a long ways over the years, and is ALWAYS changing. New fields are added, methods are constantly being developed and preferred over others. This data, ESPECIALLY for e-commerce products is immensely important nowadays. We can help assure that your data is always presented in the best possible way according to modern standards.</p>
  633. <p>Do not hesitate to <a href="/contact-fourth-wave-consulting">contact us</a> if you have concerns or questions with how your schema data is being presented and we would love to assist you in getting it right with our tried and true NetSuite SiteBuilder or other solutions.</p>
  634. ]]></content:encoded>
  635. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2019/05/what-to-know-about-schema-org-and-microdata-tagging.html/feed</wfw:commentRss>
  636. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  637. </item>
  638. <item>
  639. <title>Netsuite Site Builder Responsive Conversion &#8211; Tips &#038; Tricks</title>
  640. <link>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2019/02/netsuite-site-builder-responsive-conversion-tips-tricks.html</link>
  641. <comments>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2019/02/netsuite-site-builder-responsive-conversion-tips-tricks.html#respond</comments>
  642. <dc:creator><![CDATA[Kevin Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
  643. <pubDate>Wed, 13 Feb 2019 14:08:51 +0000</pubDate>
  644. <category><![CDATA[E-Commerce]]></category>
  645. <category><![CDATA[Netsuite]]></category>
  646. <category><![CDATA[CSS]]></category>
  647. <category><![CDATA[Responsive Design]]></category>
  648. <category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>
  649. <category><![CDATA[Site Builder]]></category>
  650. <category><![CDATA[Stores]]></category>
  651. <category><![CDATA[Styles]]></category>
  652. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.fourthwc.com/?p=4086</guid>
  653.  
  654. <description><![CDATA[Welcome to 2019 What Is &#8220;Responsive Design&#8221; ? Responsive design in a nutshell is when your site automatically fits within the user’s device. Thus, if the user has a small screen (width-wise), the elements will rearrange to show you what really matters (CTA buttons, other actionable items). You’ll often see bigger buttons, more blank space [&#8230;]]]></description>
  655. <content:encoded><![CDATA[
  656. <figure class="wp-block-image"><img alt=""/></figure>
  657.  
  658.  
  659.  
  660. <h2>Welcome to 2019</h2>
  661. <h3>What Is &#8220;Responsive Design&#8221; ?</h3>
  662. <p>Responsive design in a nutshell is when your site automatically fits within the user’s device. Thus, if the user has a small screen (width-wise), the elements will rearrange to show you what really matters (CTA buttons, other actionable items). You’ll often see bigger buttons, more blank space between the various web elements in hopes to avoid accidental user actions, smaller font-sizes, etc.</p>
  663. <span id="more-4086"></span>
  664. <p>Enough of the jargon &#8211; the word &#8220;responsive&#8221; in Web Design &#038; Development does not really mean much anymore, but rather has become a standard. If your site isn&#8217;t responsive, especially if it&#8217;s an E-Commerce website, you&#8217;re going to receive some complaints and you are most definitely late to the game. Responsive web designs in the modern age are done in mobile first and elements are introduced as the screen sizes or viewport increases. Whether it&#8217;s from angry, frustrated customers, or via low conversion numbers and high bounce rates in your Google Analytics account, if you are receiving any of these, it&#8217;s time to get to work.</p>
  665. <br>
  666. <h3>Where Do We Begin?</h3>
  667. <p>If you are reading this, it&#8217;s likely you have a non-responsive site built on Netsuite SiteBuilder &#8211; which was initially introduced in the year 2003, far before the term &#8220;responsive design&#8221; even existed. Because of this, there are some initial additions and configurations we need to perform to the surrounding wrapper of your SiteBuilder website and theme</p>
  668. <h3>First Steps &#8211; Theme Configuration</h3>
  669. <p>There is a few important first steps to make to your theme in order for any style changes to become effect:</p>
  670. <ul>
  671.    <li>First &#8211; check which theme is live. Duplicate the existing theme and start fresh so you can always fall back to the old theme in case something goes awry.</li>
  672.    <li>Add in a &#8220;Meta Viewport&#8221; tag under &#8220;Addition to &lt;HEAD&gt;&#8221; in your theme edits <br><code>&lt;meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"&gt;&lt;meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9; IE=8al; IE=7; IE=EDGE" /&gt;</code></li>
  673.    
  674.    <li>Remove hard-coded widths (if any) from sidebar elements. These will restrict the widths of the elements to pixel values which we don&#8217;t want in this case, since we want it to be adaptive in all browser sizes.</li>
  675. </ul>
  676.    <h3>Debugging Workflow</h3>
  677.    <p>We need to set a baseline to determine what state your website is currently in. If you didn&#8217;t know a problem existed before you began the responsive conversion, you won&#8217;t know when these issues may have occurred or which change caused them.</p>
  678. <ul>
  679.    <li>Open up the homepage along with a few main inner pages to check the console in your web inspector for any pre-existing Javascript errors that might be occurring which may be fixed or made worse with the changing of a jQuery version.</li>
  680.    <li>Style changes can be a bit of a pain to keep track of syntax errors, along with other small edits you may not even knew you performed. To alleviate the pain of going &#8220;What the hell did i change and where?&#8221; questions &#8211; I highly recommend setting up a simple local git environment.<br />You don&#8217;t necessarily need to setup and create or push to a repository, but it is helpful to simply &#8220;commit&#8221; changes and be able to have change log as you go. You can simply revert each commit locally since Netsuite does NOT keep a record of file revisions outside of a timestamp.</li>
  681.    <li>Add in and make sure that jQuery is running 2.2, not 1.x or 3.x <br><code>&lt;script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.2.4/jquery.min.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;</code><br/></li>
  682.    <li>Under &#8220;Body&#8221; tab in Themes menu, add <br><code>&lt;!-- Begin --&gt; and &lt;!-- end --&gt;</code><br/> template tags for easier referencing when using the Inspect Element. This saves a TON of time &#8220;digging&#8221; through the various locations of templates within Netsuite.</li>
  683. </ul>
  684. <h3>Stylesheet Tips</h3>
  685. <ul>
  686.    <li>Download a local copy of relevant style override files from Web Hosting Files which are referenced in the &#8220;Addition to <code>&lt;HEAD&gt;</code> section of the General Theme menu.</li>
  687.    <li>For easier reading, go to <a href="https://css2sass.herokuapp.com/">HerokuApp</a> and paste the entire stylesheet in the left column and click &#8220;convert to SCSS&#8221;. You can also do this locally via gulpfile and local configuration but I&#8217;ve found this is just as easy and the local setup is an unnecessary step most of the time. This tool will also eliminate all duplicated style / parent element declarations and also present you with any syntax errors before converting. Its a pretty useful debugging tool.</li>
  688.    <li>For going from your generated SCSS back to a regular CSS file, which you need to do before uploading or replacing the existing stylesheet, I use the website: <a href="https://www.cssportal.com/scss-to-css/">CSS Portal</a>. Make SURE to hit clear or refresh EVERY time you convert the code, i&#8217;ve had a few headaches where it simply duplicated the entire stylesheet a few times opn accident, causing the stylesheet file to be astronomically large.</li>
  689.    <li>Before the wide adoption of the FlexBox across all major browsers, I used to immediately include / install a reference to a CSS framework, such as Bootstrap or Foundation to alleviate reinventing &#8220;the wheel&#8221; that is responsive styles. However &#8211; now I simply do most of my styles with FlexBox, as it can convert previously non-responsive elements into responsive with just one or two simple CSS declarations. You can read more about FlexBox <a href="https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/">here</a></li>
  690.    <li>Do not &#8220;Edit&#8221; the stylesheet, instead save local .css file and Overwrite file. If you simply edit and try to save it will notify you that the record didn&#8217;t change, and the changes wont reflect on the site (due to caching) which could cause some confusion.</li>
  691.    <li>Increase the stylesheet &#8220;version&#8221; by adding a &#8220;-v.x&#8221; to the end of the stylesheet filename and re-reference that version number under your theme&#8217;s &#8220;Addition To Head&#8221; section. I.E. &#8220;styles-v12.css&#8221;.</li>
  692. </ul>
  693. <h3>Converting Table Layout</h3>
  694. <p>Since SiteBuilder relies on the archaic HTML element that is tables, certain elements of your template must be in table format. This usually works out fine for Desktop viewport sizes, but once you get into the 1024px and under range, that&#8217;s when the table rows and cells begin to become non-resposnive to the viewport window. To quickly alleviate this, I put the following styles in my SCSS stylesheet:<br><code>@media only screen and (max-width : 1024px) {
  695.    #div__body {
  696.    table {
  697.    border-collapse: unset;
  698.  
  699.    tbody {
  700.    td {
  701.    display: inline-block;
  702.    }
  703.    }
  704.    }
  705.    }
  706.    }</code><br/>
  707.    This makes the tables behave MUCH better and collapse appropriately on mobile and tasblet devices when the window begins to touch elements on the page.
  708. </p>
  709. <h3>Conclusion &#8211; Don&#8217;t Beat Yourself Up!</h3>
  710. <p>In conclusion &#8211; these are simply just tips and general guidelines which I have provided to help alleviate the stress of converting an existing Netsuite SiteBuilder site to become responsive. There is no single correct way of doing this, but there are certainly wrong steps you can make along the way to make your time performing this task much more daunting. Nowadays &#8211; there are so many tools out there and great code editors compared to 10 years ago. If you catch yourself losing multiple days of work and not making any progress, my best advice is to take a step back, rethink things, and just know that you are likely making it harder than it needs to be. If you have any questions about any of these tips, please do not hesitate to leave a comment and let us discuss them.</p>
  711. <p>Happy coding and don&#8217;t let the thousands of existing lines of CSS intimidate you as we are here to help you with any sort of problem you have. Contact us via our <a href="https://www.fourthwc.com/contact-fourth-wave-consulting">contact form</a> and we will be more than happy to assist you with any custom solution you may require.</p>
  712. ]]></content:encoded>
  713. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.fourthwc.com/e-commerce/2019/02/netsuite-site-builder-responsive-conversion-tips-tricks.html/feed</wfw:commentRss>
  714. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  715. </item>
  716. <item>
  717. <title>Most NetSuite Websites Are No Longer Tracking Safari Conversions for Adwords</title>
  718. <link>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2017/11/safari-conversions-for-adwords.html</link>
  719. <comments>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2017/11/safari-conversions-for-adwords.html#respond</comments>
  720. <dc:creator><![CDATA[David Norris]]></dc:creator>
  721. <pubDate>Mon, 20 Nov 2017 19:38:35 +0000</pubDate>
  722. <category><![CDATA[Netsuite]]></category>
  723. <category><![CDATA[Google Adwords]]></category>
  724. <category><![CDATA[Reference Checkout]]></category>
  725. <category><![CDATA[Safari]]></category>
  726. <category><![CDATA[Site Builder]]></category>
  727. <category><![CDATA[SuiteCommerce Advanced]]></category>
  728. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.fourthwc.com/?p=1575</guid>
  729.  
  730. <description><![CDATA[This Fix is Required to Ensure Safari Conversions are Tracked Why Was This Change Made? In June, Apple introduced Intelligent Tracking Prevention, a major change to the way Safari handles third party cookies, which is the main way advertising companies gather data about users. The main goal is to limit the ability of large data mining [&#8230;]]]></description>
  731. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>This Fix is Required to Ensure Safari Conversions are Tracked</h2>
  732. <h3>Why Was This Change Made?</h3>
  733. <p> In June, Apple introduced <a href="https://marketingland.com/wwdc-safari-will-block-third-party-trackers-following-users-around-web-216734">Intelligent Tracking Prevention</a>, a major change to the way Safari handles third party cookies, which is the main way advertising companies gather data about users. The main goal is to limit the ability of large data mining companies to  build extensive web history for all users using hidden tags that they don&#8217;t even know about. ITP mostly targets pervasive retargeting practices rather than disrupting advertisers’ ability to track ad campaign performance. In my opinion, this is a good thing for users, although it also reinforces the near monopoly of online ad market share for Google and Facebook. Due to the change, there are specific consequences for NetSuite websites. </p>
  734. <h3>What it Means for Site Builder and SuiteCommerce Advanced Websites</h3>
  735. <p><span id="more-1575"></span></p>
  736. <p>All NetSuite-hosted websites run on either site builder or SuiteCommerce Advanced (SCA), and many of the Site Builder websites have upgraded the checkout process to Reference Checkout or Site Builder Extensions (Vinson or Elbrus), which use the same underlying technology as SCA. The SSP checkout technology requires a tracking module, and there is a built-in module provided by NetSuite for Google Adwords that uses the &#8216;pixel only&#8217; implementation, which most of these sites use. Since September 2017, any website that uses this module is no longer tracking conversions for Apple&#8217;s Safari browser, which makes up for more than 50% of mobile web traffic. This can play havoc with your ROI reporting and pay per click (PPC) management. I called Google&#8217;s tech support, and they confirmed that the pixel-only implementation is not tracking conversions for Safari. </p>
  737. <h3>Our New Tracking Module Fixes the Problem</h3>
  738. <p>The solution is to replace that default Adwords conversion tracking module (which doesn&#8217;t even track revenue) with  one that uses the new JavaScript tracking code. This new format conforms with Sarafi&#8217;s new rules, and will ensure accurate conversion tracking for all your users. We have built, tested, and implemented a new tracker that we can install for you in one day. <a href="/contact-fourth-wave-consulting">Contact us</a> and let&#8217;s talk about fixing your tracking. </p>
  739. <h3>More Technical Details</h3>
  740. <p> Web developers and more technical people may appreciate these additional details:</p>
  741. <ol>
  742. <li>Google Analytics (GA) uses a first party cookie and will continue to track attributions properly &#8211; no fixes are needed. However, GA and Adwords use different methods for attributing sales, and I highly recommend having both systems working properly so you can compare if there are any questions.</li>
  743. <li>Following Apple&#8217;s guidelines, Google is storing information about the ad click on their servers, and uses GA to bring that information back in when a sale is made. This requires the JavaScript implementation of the Adwords conversion tracker, however. </li>
  744. <li><a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-analytics-adwords-response-apple-intelligent-tracking-prevention-282233">More details on the GA workaround:</a><br />
  745.    <quote> How does this new cookie work?<br />
  746.      The new Google Analytics cookie — called the _gac cookie — extends the usage of Google Analytics (GA) tracking to include AdWords conversion tracking. It will be used to store the ad click information when auto-tagging is enabled. From the support page, &#8220;Analtyics writes campaign information to the _gac cookie when a user opens a page on your site via a URL that employs AdWords auto-tagging.&#8221;</p>
  747. <p>      The big difference is how the cookie is handled.</p>
  748. <p>      Today, the conversion cookie is set on the Googleadservices.com domain, which means it is considered a third-party cookie. With this change, the new _gac cookie will be set on the advertiser’s domain, becoming a first-party cookie and acceptable to ITP. That means ad data associated with the user will remain intact for attribution and conversion reporting. </quote>
  749.  </li>
  750. <li><a href="https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention/">Apple&#8217;s announcement about the change</a></li>
  751. <li><a href="https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/7521212">How Adwords tracks websites</a> &#038; <a href="https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/7519794">how Google Analytics helps</a></li>
  752. <li><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/14/16308138/apple-safari-11-advertiser-groups-cookie-tracking-letter">Advertisers complain about it.</a></li>
  753. <li><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/15/apple-defends-new-ad-tracking-prevention-measures-in-safari/">Apple responds, sticking to their guns</a></li>
  754. </ol>
  755. ]]></content:encoded>
  756. <wfw:commentRss>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2017/11/safari-conversions-for-adwords.html/feed</wfw:commentRss>
  757. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
  758. </item>
  759. <item>
  760. <title>Make Your NetSuite Site Builder Site Secure &#8211; HTTPS Throughout</title>
  761. <link>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2017/05/site-builder-site-secure-https-throughout.html</link>
  762. <comments>https://www.fourthwc.com/netsuite/2017/05/site-builder-site-secure-https-throughout.html#respond</comments>
  763. <dc:creator><![CDATA[David Norris]]></dc:creator>
  764. <pubDate>Sun, 28 May 2017 16:13:21 +0000</pubDate>
  765. <category><![CDATA[Netsuite]]></category>
  766. <category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization (SEO)]]></category>
  767. <category><![CDATA[CDN]]></category>
  768. <category><![CDATA[content delivery network]]></category>
  769. <category><![CDATA[performance]]></category>
  770. <category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>
  771. <guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.fourthwc.com/?p=1274</guid>
  772.  
  773. <description><![CDATA[Get the Benefits of a Secure Website Without Buying SCA Why Secure Your Entire Site? When you view a webpage, that information passes through a dozen or more servers to get to you. If that URL starts with https://, anyone in the path can view or even modify the contents of the page. ISPs insert [&#8230;]]]></description>
  774. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Get the Benefits of a Secure Website Without Buying SCA</h2>
  775. <p><strong>Why Secure Your Entire Site?</strong> When you view a webpage, that information passes through a dozen or more servers to get to you. If that URL starts with https://, anyone in the path can view or even modify the contents of the page. ISPs insert their own ads in web pages, can now legally track &#038; sell your browsing history, and many governments around the world collect massive troves of browsing data. Securing your entire site (instead of just the checkout portion) is now considered a very good thing to do for your users. It&#8217;s nearly impossible for a &#8216;man in the middle&#8217; to extract or change information on secure pages. It&#8217;s a win for the user. Here is a <a href="https://ahrefs.com/blog/http-vs-https-for-seo/">more detailed explanation of HTTP vs HTTPS</a> if you want more background.<br />
  776. <div style="width: 1610px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="https://www.fourthwc.com/images/cdn/content-delivery-network.png"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://www.fourthwc.com/images/cdn/content-delivery-network.png" width="1600" height="1200" alt="How a Content Delivery Network Works" class="size-medium" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">How a Content Delivery Network Works</p></div></p>
  777. <h3>Benefits of Using a CDN</h3>
  778. <p><span id="more-1274"></span></p>
  779. <ul>
  780. <li>Your pages load faster for users and search engines, which may boost your organic rankings and conversion rates.</li>
  781. <li>Avoid bottlenecks during peak usage &#8211; when your site is the busiest, the CDN will keep it from slowing down.</li>
  782. <li>Google has stated they give a small rankings boost for secure sites.</li>
  783. </ul>
  784. <h3>Google Gives Us Extra Motivation</h3>
  785. <p>Google has a mind-boggling amount of influence over the web, thanks to its near monopoly of search traffic. There are two main benefits:</p>
  786. <ol>
  787. <li>A small organic rankings boost for HTTPS sites</li>
  788. <li>Referrer data will be preserved when users come to your site from a secure URL, like  search results pages (SERPs).</li>
  789. </ol>
  790. <p>Obviously everyone wants a rankings boost, but the lead has really been buried &#8211; the return of keyword data! Currently, Google still hides the keyword even for HTTPS websites. I hope public pressure can get them to change their mind, as their stance is pretty hypocritical. Other HTTPS search engines DO provide the keyword, like Bing. Read more on <a href="https://www.seobook.com/false-privacy-claims">Google&#8217;s privacy hypocrisy here</a>.</p>
  791. <h2>Options for Site Builder Websites</h2>
  792. <p>NetSuite has said multiple times that they will not be offering Site Builder sites any way to make their entire site secure. Maybe they think that will get more businesses to spend six figures on their SuiteCommerce Advanced behemoth, but it&#8217;s not necessary for site-wide HTTPS. <br />
  793.  <strong>Content Delivery Networks to the Rescue</strong><br />
  794.  With the right technology, you can get your entire site running on HTTPS without upgrading from Site Builder. A content delivery network (CDN) works by sitting between your site and your users, speeding up the flow of information by caching it and delivering it from servers that are closer to the user. Some CDNs like <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/">Cloudflare</a> also offer the ability to convert your HTTP sections to HTTPS. I have done this on my test drive site as a proof of concept:<br />
  795.  <a href="https://tdr.fourthwc.net">https://tdr.fourthwc.net</a>
  796. </p>
  797. <h2>Sounds Great! How&#8217;s It Done?</h2>
  798. <p>There are some technical aspects to this:</p>
  799. <ul>
  800. <li>Code updates in site builder to ensure compatibility with CDN (can be somewhat complex)</li>
  801. <li>Configuring the CDN</li>
  802. <li>Purchase &amp; set up a custom SSL certificate (optional)</li>
  803. <li>Post-launch testing &amp; fixes</li>
  804. </ul>
  805. <h2>Contact Us for More Details</h2>
  806. <p>Each website has its own customizations and needs, and no two CDN projects are the same. We will need to make sure you are using relative references for resources like CSS &#038; JavaScript files, and may need to set up exceptions in the CDN for certain files. We at Fourth Wave don&#8217;t have any standard solutions, each project is customized to our client&#8217;s needs. <a href="https://www.fourthwc.com/contact-fourth-wave-consulting">Get in touch with us</a> and we can discuss your situation for free.</p>
  807. <hr width='90%'/>
  808. ]]></content:encoded>
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  810. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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